Opera Mobile on Your Pharos Traveler Smartphone

The Pharos Traveler Smartphone gives you choices. As a
Windows Mobile device it can use many of the thousands of different
applications which have been developed for Windows Mobile over the past ten
years. One of those applications, Opera Mobile, is a Web browser which provides
an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer. Opera Mobile is one of the
extras which comes already installed on your Traveler Smartphone.

Opera Mobile offers many features to make Web browsing on
your Traveler Smartphone enjoyable. For example, you can open three Websites in
different tabs, you can easily zoom in or out on a page, and you can use
touch-and-sweep gestures to quickly navigate on a page. Opera’s browsers are
well known for fast performance, too.

Let’s have a quick look at how Opera Mobile works on your
new Traveler Smartphone.

Getting Started with Opera Mobile

You’ll find Opera Mobile in the Programs folder. When you
tap the Opera icon you’ll see a screen similar to Figure 1.

Figure 1: Opera Mobile

Opera Mobile is quite easy to use, but you’ll want to learn
about the five icons along the bottom of the screen in order to quickly get the
most from the application. From left to right these icons are:

·Back: returns you to the previous page.

·Bookmarks: pages you have saved so you can
return to them in the future. Opera Mobile automatically imports your Internet
Explorer Favorites so you have quick access to any Favorites you have saved.

·Tabs: allows you to open or close tabs and to switch
between open tabs. You can have up to three tabs open at the same time.

·Home: returns you to your home page.

·Menu: displays a menu of options as shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2: Opera Mobile's main menu

Zooming the Opera Mobile View

The display on your Traveler Smartphone hosts an amazing 480
x 800 pixels (which happens to be four times the resolution of devices like the
Apple iPhone). As a result, even very tiny text is clear and readable. Still,
most Web pages can seem pretty small if you’re viewing the entire page at once.
Fortunately, Opera Mobile allows you to easily zoom in or out so you can see
exactly what you want.

Figure 3 shows a typical Web page as it displays full
screen.

Figure 3: A Web page zoomed out to display the entire
page

Figure 4 shows the same Web page after zooming in on the
page.

Figure 4: Zooming in makes the Web page easier to read.

Zooming in or out is quite simple. If you want to zoom
completely in or out, double-tap the screen at the point you want to see. For
more precise control of the zoom level, tap-and-hold the screen to display the
pop-up menu shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Select Zoom from the pop-up menu.

After you select Zoom from the pop-up menu, you’ll see a
zoom slider along the bottom of the screen as shown in Figure 6. Drag the
slider right to zoom in or left to zoom out to the precise level of zoom you
prefer.

Figure 6: Choose the precise zoom level you want.

Opening Web Pages in Tabs

Another very handy Opera Mobile feature you’ll probably use
often on your Traveler Smartphone is the ability to open up to three web pages
in separate tabs. You might, for example, want to follow your favorite sporting
event on one tab and your stock market investments on another.

Figure 7 shows an example with two tabs open to different
Websites. Notice that the Tabs icon changes to show the number of tabs you
currently have open.

Figure 7: Two Websites are open in different tabs.

In addition to using the Tabs icon to open new tabs, you can
tap-and-hold a link to display a pop-up menu which will allow you to open the
link in a new tab.

There’s Even More

Opera Mobile and your new Traveler Smartphone are great
companions. In this brief article you’ve only seen a little of how well they
work together. You’ll want to explore and see for yourself just how much fun
you can have browsing the Web with these two.